As discussed at the AGM, this years State Championships will be held in May, and selections for Youth, Rachuig, Seniors, and Restricted teams will be made from that event.
The preliminary plan is that squads will run from approximately 10.30am on Saturday (May 5th) and 8.30am on Sunday 6th. Trophy events in the afternoon on the Sunday.
Bowlers nominating for an abovementioned team will bowl 15 games over the two days, being the first three squads Saturday and the first two squads Sunday, with the total of all five squads being ranked for positions in the team. Please read the entry form carefully when it comes out.
To fit it all in, this championship will be for ADULT BOWLERS ONLY, no junior entries. Junior bowlers wishing to nominate for the Youth team will pay full squad prices (exactly as the youth bowlers are) and be allocated spaces in the same squads to ensure fair and even competition, however will not be included in the championships scores. The working plan is for a junior version to be run in September for presidents shield trials. More on that to come down the track.
We are going to try pioneering some streamlined event compression this year, and all going well will return to a larger format championship over two weekends in 2013. The main aim here is to reduce the number of weekends that we’re all in the bowl, and the overall cost to everyone by having less events clogging up the calendar.
As part of the compression, the trophy event formats will be aligned. This is likely the last year we will be offering a representative spot in Open Masters, and in the interests of balancing the competitive nature of Masters with the concept of value for the bowlers, the format will change this year. All masters will be conducted simultaneously in the same format, and finalists in multiple divisions will have their scores counted appropriately into those divisions. Bowlers may now bowl Open Masters and Seniors Cup for example, without having to be disadvantaged by bowling another bunch of games in the same afternoon or paying two finals fees (note: finalists in two divisions will pay a higher finals fee than single division finalists, ie Lineage + Prizefund 1 + Prizefund 2). The logistics of this will be very complicated, and your feedback at the end will be most welcome.
With your support we can make this work, and if we can combine events like this we get lower overhead, and therefore more prizefund. Stay tuned here for an entry form announcement (hopefully release) next Monday, April 9th.
